This is a summary of all the lectures of Core Themes of Anthropology. This includes all the power point slides and everything Freek Colombijn mentioned in his lectures.
Ethics in Anthropology: Lectures
Lecture 1: Introduction
Anthropology a distinctive social science:
A social science that is research based, looks at individuals, has ethnography (scientific
descriptions of peoples and cultures) and has fieldwork as its defining work.
It studies people, which is everything.
Culture: the way of life. It is looking at the commonalities.
The view of how interlocutors (others/respondents) look at the world.
Holism: An approach of looking at the connections between all different factors.
Contextualization: whatever you study, you study it in the context of something else. You
try to understand how people make sense of it themselves.
Critical attitude
Solidarity with marginalized people; we look at people in difficult situations
(empathetic).
Whole world as object of study
Anthropologist excel in making the familiar exotic and the exotic familiar through
comparison.
Different things/cultures start to become logical.
Things that you took for granted in your own society, you start to be (re)amazed by it.
Definition of anthropology; study differences and commonalities.
Comparison of societies; what is essential and specific for humans in general.
Fieldwork: Comparative study of cultural and social life.
Four fields: in EU different disciplines (in USA its all the same)
Cultural anthropology
Physical anthropology; human bones, and the evolution
Archaeology
Linguistic anthropology
Culture: Different aspects of behaviors which members of societies have acquired (after they
were born).
E.g.: abilities, notions (what do you think of society), forms of behavior, objects.
Refers to the acquired, cognitive, and symbolic aspects of existence.
It is learned, shared human behavior and ideas, which can and do change with time.
Caveats (kanttekeningen) of culture
Unawareness of culture: it is noticed after culture differences.
Context specific: how one behaves depends on the context.
Not deterministic; it does not define how one should behave in a specific situation.
Not bounded; it looks integrated/shared/bounded, but it is not shared by all or most
inhabitants.
Not integrated, different opinions about people’s own culture.
Means something different to anthropologist and politicians.
, Lecture 2: Theoretical paradigms and decolonization
The end of colonialism; the people observed started to have their own intellectuals and
spokespersons who frequently object to how others interpret their life.
Decolonization: groups that used to dominate the discipline take a step aside to create space
for other voices.
Ethnocentrism: evaluating other people from one’s own vantage point and describing them
in one’s own terms.
People make moral judgement (fact or assumption) based on own standards or
background.
Cultural relativism: is the doctrine that societies or cultures are qualitatively different and
have their own unique inner logic, and that it is therefore scientifically absurd to rank them
on a scale’.
Attempting to understand other societies in an as unprejudiced way as possible.
It is accepting cultures on your own terms, assess and accept that people from different
cultures do something differently.
à As anthropologist our curiosity comes from ethnocentric judgment, that’s why we are
festinating.
à Being a total cultural relativist is not possible due to experience/backgrounds.
Meanings of a ‘colonized anthropology’
Anthropology departments
Relationship between anthropologist and researched people
Anthropology canon: what are the classical words.
Anthropological concepts.
Relationship between anthropologist and research people is always one between a white,
Northern scholar and non-white people in the South.
19th century, early 20th century; change started.
Large groups have merged in former colonized companies.
Inversed anthropology: research in urban societies and look at integration into society.
Ontological & Epistemology
Epistemology: ‘the theory of knowledge, especially with regard to its methods, validity and
scope’.
The reflection on the methods that you used; which are valid / best / worse / objective /
reliable?
Ontology: ‘the branch of metaphysics dealing with the nature of being’
Sometimes you are theorizing about something in a culture that in the culture its selves is
not relevant or even a factor, thus why should you do it?
They are not just human actors in society but also non-human actors.
, E.g. if a culture says there is a spiritual world and you don’t believe in it, you should not
mention it but go with it.
Theory: a supposition or a system of ideas intended to explain something, especially one
based on general principles independent of the thing to be explained.
Specifies a relationship between at least two different factors, at a level that is more general
than you are experiencing / know now.
Theory attempts to answer critical philosophical and practical problems.
Levels:
1. Concept
2. Processes; a higher level, more explanatory level.
3. Grand theories; enormous explanatory ideas (e.g., evolutionism).
Function:
Communication with scholars; need concepts to talk to your peers.
Understanding & explaining researched phenomena.
Defining what is relevant and what do we leave out?
Theoretical paradigms: assumptions about the nature of society, a theoretical core, examples
of key texts, a name for the paradigm, and a sense of membership among the followers.
Starts from a theoretical core idea.
Replies to specific concerns/questions from our history / era.
They emerge in a particular era and to earlier ideas.
Paradigms:
Structural-functionalism (Radclife): phenomena is functional and contribute to overall
structure.
Historical particularism (Boaz): Focus on relationship and the structure.
Transactionalism (Barth)
Structuralism (Mauss)
Evolutionism
Culture and personality
Symbolic or interpretive anthropology
Genderstudies
Postmodernism
And more
Evolutonism
Lewis Henry morgan, Ancient Society (1877)
Johannes Bachofen, Das Muterrecht (1861); wrote about evolution of
partnership/marriage. According to him male & female is the best.
Edward Burnett Tylor, Anthropology (1881)
The era of imperialism, globalization: this came together in the paradigm of evolutionism.
Historical particularism: the view that all societies or cultures have their own unique history.
, Franz Boas (1858 – 1942); fieldwork among Inuit and Kwakiutl; emphasized that we need
to look at every society as an individual case.
Structural-functionalism and colonialism: most social and cultural phenomena could be seen
as functional in the sense that they contributed to the maintenance of the overall social
structure.
British anthropologists developed a strong interest in local politics among peoples often
subjected to indirect rule from the colonial office.
Came from imperialism gave an inescapable
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